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Resources updated between Monday, July 27, 2015 and Sunday, August 02, 2015

August 2, 2015

Soldiers investigating in Lake Chad (file photo)

The massacre took place last Monday, but the news was released only yesterday because the area of Lake Chad is devoid of any type of telephone; survivors had to reach Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, to raise the alarm.

Earlier reports stated that ten men were killed, but the number has since been adjusted upward. According to Abubakar Gamandi, head of the fishermen's union in Borno State, on Monday around 4 pm "Boko Haram attacked three villages on the shores of Lake Chad where they slaughtered 10 people, all of them fishermen."

"Boko Haram decided not to use guns so as not to attract the attention of soldiers from Baga. This is why they used knives to slaughter their victims," Gamandi said.

The victims are all citizens of Chad, where in recent months there have been numerous attacks by Islamist radicals.

Bishop Rosario Pio Ramolo, of the diocese of Gorι in the south of Chad, said that in the last few months "attacks have multiplied in Chad, causing the more than seventy deaths and two hundred wounded." The violence has occurred mainly in the capital N'Djamena and in the areas bordering Nigeria.

The increase in such incidents is thought to be a retaliation for actions taken by the Chadian government against Boko Haram, particularly in the area around Lake Chad, whose waters reach Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.

"The Chadian President Idriss Deby has declared open war against the Islamists,' said Bishop Ramolo, "and these acts represent an attempt at revenge. Before now the extremists had not acted in Chad, despite being on the border with Nigeria."

Authorities also believe that some Islamists have infiltrated among Central African refugees or among Chadians repatriated from the Central African Republic.

Clothing covering all or part of the face, such as the burqa or hijab, the Islamic veil, has been prohibited.

As of last Wednesday, the mayor of N'Djamena illegalized begging for security reasons.

On Friday, Chadian troops killed 117 Boko Haram fighters in an operation against the jihadists hiding on the islands of Lake Chad, according to reports from authorities.

"One hundred seventeen terrorists have been killed, two Chadian soldiers died and two others were wounded in the operation against the Nigeria-based movement, which began two weeks ago," said Chadian army spokesman, Col. Azem Bermendoa Agouna.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram struck out as well Friday, with a female suicide bomber on a tricycle killing six people in a crowded market in Maiduguri, in the Nigerian northeast.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who won the election in March this year on a promise to crush the radical Islamist group, said Friday that a new 8,700-soldier task force would "lead to the speedy defeat and elimination of Boko Haram."

When former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee raised the specter of the Holocaust in his evaluation of President Obama's Iran deal, he touched a raw nerve because Huckabee got it right: The Holocaust taught us that evil is not satiated after it consumes Jews. A deal that is catastrophic for Israel is also catastrophic for the United States. The Governor reminded us that imagining the deal means losing some purportedly tolerable number of American servicemen to Iranian terror, somewhere "over there," is morally and empirically wrong.

Critics, however-starting with the President-jumped on the Governor's remarks  misread and misrepresented. What the Governor actually said to Breitbart News on July 25, 2015 was as follows: "This president's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."

In response to the critics, Huckabee refused to be cowed. He subsequently told reporters and tweeted: "The last time the world did not take seriously threats against the Jewish people, just before World War II, this ended up in the murder of six million Jews... For decades, Iranian leaders have pledged to 'destroy,' 'annihilate,' and 'wipe Israel off the map' with a 'big Holocaust.'" "What's 'unacceptable' is a mushroom cloud over Israel," he added. "If we don't take seriously the threats of Iran, then God help us all."

President Obama, anxious to court American Jews to support the deal  and New York Senator Chuck Schumer in particular  responded with alacrity from a trip abroad in Ethiopia: "The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are, I think, part of just a general pattern that we've seen that is - would be considered ridiculous if it weren't so sad."

Huckabee shot back via Twitter: "What's 'ridiculous and sad' is that @POTUS does not take Iran's repeated threats seriously."

The accuracy of Huckabee's reply was corroborated by Secretary Kerry within a day, when Kerry testified at the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week. Over and over, Kerry was asked by Congressmen about the dangers of Iran in the here and now.

Congressman Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL): Three months ago Iranian Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi stated that erasing Israel off the map is non-negotiable. Do you believe his comments accurately reflect Iranian government goals?

Secretary Kerry: I think it accurately reflects some people's rhetoric and some people's attitude...

Congressman Rep. Steven Chabot (R-OH): If this is such a good deal, why is Israel so opposed to it?

Secretary Kerry: First of all, I understand when you say Israel, there are people in Israel who support it...There are concerns about the region they live in, about the nature of the rhetoric that's used...

Congressman Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX): Is it the policy of the ayatollah...that Iran wants to destroy the United States? ...Do you think it's their policy to destroy us?

Secretary Kerry: I think they have a policy of opposition to us and a great enmity. But I have no specific knowledge of a plan by Iran to actually destroy us.

In other words, the Prime Minister of a democratic state, a close ally, and three-quarters of Jewish Israelis from all political stripes who are opposed to the deal were dismissed, along with the insufficiently specific "rhetoric."

The militarization of Iran's nuclear program, Kerry suggested in the same hearing, was all in the past. "We know what they were doing, we've already drawn our conclusion about 2003. We know they were engaged in trying to make a weapon." So this deal literally gives Iran a do-over.

Downplaying the evil intent of Iran isn't just fuzzy thinking. This posture has formed the essence of the President's foreign policy from the moment he took office and is critical to appreciating the catastrophic nature of the deal.

As early as March 2009, President Obama produced a video in which he directly addressed the "leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran" seeking "engagement grounded in mutual respect." When his vision finally culminated last week in the overthrow of the entire hard-won UN sanctions regime, Ambassador Samantha Power boasted that negotiators "demonstrated" "mutual respect."

After the President ridiculed the Governor for his own political purposes, there were other politically tinged responses.

The Anti-Defamation League  whose new National Director Jonathan Greenblatt is a former Special Assistant to President Obama  immediately fell in line behind the President. Naturally, Greenblatt labeled Huckabee's comments "completely out of line."

Marvin Hier, Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told CNN, "...the only way we're going to win this is with bipartisan support...[W]hat [Huckabee] said...is hardly the way to achieve that bipartisan support." Huckabee's political rival Jeb Bush told MSNBC: "This is not the way we're going to win elections..." The Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, called Huckabee's words inappropriate while explaining to USA Today that "he had met with dozens of congressional Democrats because 'I think ultimately they may decide whether this deal goes through or doesn't go through.'"

Critics of Huckabee worried that Democrats would defend their president if his honor was at stake, regardless of the demerits of the deal. Seeking precisely such an outcome, the President had twisted Huckabee's words into a personal assault devoid of substance. From Ethiopia, the President said: "we just don't fling out ad hominem attacks like that." Instead of addressing Iran's illegal, evil intentions and deeds, or Iran's lack of mutual respect for diversity of any kind, the President made the critique of the deal all about himself.

The liberal news outlet Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) ran a piece about Huckabee's comments that counseled those considering making a Holocaust analogy: "never again." That's exactly the intimidation President Obama hoped to achieve.

It is also exactly the opposite of the lesson that ought to be drawn from the Holocaust.

In 1939, when Hitler spoke of "the end of the Jews" of Europe, precious few took seriously his genocidal intent. Just days ago, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a chanting crowd: "You heard 'Death to Israel,' 'Death to the US'... So we ask Almighty God to accept these prayers by the people of Iran." Last year, Khamenei said "this barbaric... regime of Israel... has no cure but to be annihilated."

It is time that the Obama administration stopped calling these statements "rhetoric" and stopped pretending that the subject at hand is Mr. President.

The subject at hand is an enemy that is the leading state sponsor of terror; today openly advocates genocide; funds the killers of Israelis; tortures Americans in its prisons; and stays in power only through brutality and mass disenfranchisement. An enemy that was caught red-handed trying to acquire nuclear weapons and has spent years continuously violating nuclear non-proliferation laws.

The subject is a deal that puts billions into the hands of this deadly foe. A deal that promises Iran an end to an arms embargo when the previously entrenched Security Council regime had no time limit and was not about to expire. A deal that grants Iran a right to enrich that was denied under the now defunct legally binding resolutions.

The President's deal, with this enemy, takes Israel to the brink of a catastrophe of Holocaust proportions. What else should we call nuclear war?

SOHR could document execution of 38 people in the 13th of declaring IS alleged caliphate. The executions carried out in different areas in Syria since June 29 until July 29., where "Islamic State" executed 22 civilians, including 2 children and 7 women, in the provinces of Hama, Homs, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Damascus, 9 fighters of the rebel and Islamist battalions and at least 7 members of the regime forces and allied militiamen, most of them beheaded.

The executions carried out for apostasy, insulting God, sodomy, adultery, banditry, joining and cooperating with the awakening movements, sorcery, copying secular papers, videoing and taking photos for 400$ and videoing oilfields, drug traffic, being officer in the regime forces, fighting IS and spying on its positions. The 13th month of declaring caliphate had witnessed the first beheading carried out by a child of "cubs of the caliphate" and first beheading carried out against women.

Thus, the number of civilians, rebels, IS militants, members of the regime forces and allied militiamen who were executed by IS since the declaration of its alleged caliphate in 6/29/2014 until this morning has risen to 3065.

It executed 1809 civilians, including 76 children and 93 women, by shooting, beheading, stoning, throwing off high place and burning in the provinces of Damascus, Rif Dimashq, Deir Ezzor, al- Raqqa, al- Hasakah, Aleppo, Homa and Hama. They executed more than 930 Arab Sunni civilians of al- Shaitat tribe's people in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, 223 Kurdish citizens by shooting them and by bladed weapons in the city of Ayn al- Arab and village of Barkh Botan and 46 civilians by burning and beheading in the village of al- Mab'ojah inhabited by people of Alawi, Ismaeili and Sunni sects in the east of the city of Salamiyyah.

The number of fighters of YPG, Jabhat al- Nusra, rebel and Islamic battalions who were executed after arresting them by IS due to the ongoing clashes among these parties reached to 225.

IS also executed 143 members of its own militants for "exceeding the limits in religion and spying for foreign countries", most of them executed after arresting them during their attempt to come back home.

888 officers and soldiers of the regime forces were also executed by IS. They were arrested during clashes between IS and the regime forces.

SOHR appeal UN Security Council, all countries and organization that claim the respect of human rights to work urgently in order to stop the crimes and violations, committed against the Syrian people by IS, Bashar al- Assad regime and all other parties, and establish specialist courts to sentence them. We also call them to support the Syrian people in order to reach to the state of freedom, democracy, justice and equality that preserve the rights of all components of the Syrian people regardless of their sects, religion and ethnics who have coexisted for better future for Syria although there are some media campaigns that work on destroying the social structure of our home Syria.